Sony breaks down the MLB The Show 19 gameplay trailer

Sony San Diego community manager and game designer Ramone Russell offers more insight into what was actually revealed in the MLB The Show 19 gameplay trailer.

On Tuesday, Sony San Diego released the first gameplay trailer for MLB The Show 19, giving us our first look at this year’s baseball sim. Although it was under two minutes in length, the trailer actually offered plenty of footage that teased intriguing new features and improvements.

As promised, Community Manager and Game Designer Ramone Russell has followed it up with a “trailer rewind,” breaking down the entire gameplay trailer shot-by-shot to offer us more insight into what’s new this year.

While Sony San Diego has already laid out a developer content schedule for which more specific details will be shared, the trailer rewind serves as a nice warm-up. From the teaser scenes of Road to the Show to the new Legends reveal to the improved defensive mechanics, check out what MLB The Show 19‘s gameplay trailer actually revealed.

It may not have been apparent with the initial trailer, but it’s great to see Sony San Diego put so much emphasis on improving defensive mechanics. MLB The Show is a franchise that prides itself on being the most realistic baseball sim, but this has always been an area that lacked polish.

“Gameplay director Chris Gill put a major focus on defense this year. The goal was to make fielders more efficient with vastly improved situational awareness,” explains Russell. “These new gameplay additions and others are at the forefront of our defensive improvement feature suite.”

Among these improvements is an added emphasis rewarding the best defensive players. As the trailer showed, which wasn’t apparent until the breakdown, a player’s fielding ability attribute will greatly impact how they react to the ball, especially in the outfield where it can determine the type of jump they get on the ball.

Another improvement is situational awareness and player efficiency. Improved AI logic and branching animations for “every single tag in the game” means fielders will make smarter decisions.

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Beyond defensive improvements, MLB The Show 19 promises more player emotion, improved animations and greater hit variety. There’s also a new batch of Legends, which Russell confirmed will come in with variations (and different attributes) to reflect the different points in their career.

As expected, Road to the Show has also seen various improvements including a new bus  (and plane), a bedroom where you can create your player from scratch and retooled archetypes. These were all briefly shown at the beginning of the trailer. New to Road to the Show in MLB The Show 19 is personality growth and relationships, both of which “will play a key role in your experience.” There’s also an all-new “dynamic challenge” in-game feature, but we’ll have to wait to hear more about that.

Once again there was no mention of improvements to Franchise mode which is incredibly disappointing. However, Russell did further tease the two new game modes, “Moments” and “March to October,” both of which we’ll have to wait to hear more about.

Throughout the next two months, Sony San Diego developers will take to Twitch and “GameStop Monday” to offer more specific details regarding the new features, improvements and modes coming in MLB The Show 19. Check out the developer content schedule of reveals below.

MLB The Show 19 will release on March 26, 2019, exclusively for PlayStation 4. Be sure to check back on Monday, February 11, for the first GameStop Monday video.